


Head space

by Scifirouge (Raven_mcbain)



Series: Original stories [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe, Multi, No Dialogue, POV First Person, PTSD, Space Stations, War Story, unusual story structure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 10:10:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16784863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raven_mcbain/pseuds/Scifirouge
Summary: I shifted impatiently from foot to foot and glared out the view port. I hated being in space after spending most of my formative years stuck on that declapicated junk heap that the military jokingly called a medical space station, I had been prepared to never set foot on a space ship or station ever again, yet here I was.





	Head space

**Author's Note:**

> Warning due to the format this story might be extremely confusing. I might write more in this universe which will help to clarify this. This is completely unbetaed so Feel free to let me know about any mistakes.

I shifted impatiently from foot to foot and glared out the view port. I hated being in space after spending most of my formative years stuck on that declapicated junk heap that the military jokingly called a medical space station, I had been prepared to never set foot on a space ship or station ever again, yet here I was. The shuttle was definitely an upgrade from the one Redbird Flyer had driven to get us from place to place, sometimes rushing us and the wounded out when the mines and the shooting got to close, Hades it was always too close. 

I was one of the few surviving implants left and so we were to presented with an honor, I was only going to give a piece of my mind. After al enough of it had been taken from me against my will and enough had been put in, the cries of space flyers reverberating through my link as their crafts exploded was something that was permanently wedged there. I was surprised at how easily I got used to the smell and feel of recycled air and the rock of deck plates under my feet, after twelve years. 

It took me five years to get my Earth legs again. On the station I would always complain about the tang in the air, the flicker lights, the reverberations that went from my feet to my head, the damn control unit that either burned or froze out. However when I finally got back to my beloved farm the steady earth felt strange, I chocked on the air, the sun hurt my eyes, it took me three years to find my Earth legs again. 

I watched on the news when all the old war stations were destroyed and I looked for the one that had held me captive for seven years but they didn't show it, wouldn't have done it justice anyway, not the clang of the space dock, or the cries of the wounded, not the stench of alcohol and burned food and flesh. Not the doctors and the nurses and the engineers and the techs and the rest of us working tirelessly, against all insanity. Our fearless leader looking at us through shadowed eyes as she thinks of her children back home, the jokes, the nightmares, the back biting, the love, the hatred, the infighting, the crying, the homesickness, the desperation, the pain. Mary-Jane sobbing her eyes out until she was finally sent to Trinity station, our vigilant head surgeon drowning himself in booze and cards, our chief engineer ready to hang herself at the sight of the next broken engine. 

Then me, hacked into the computer with an implant I didn't want, getting married through a video link and watching my 'son' grow up into a stranger, unable to attend mom's funeral, dying a little each day as my childhood was robbed away. I know that I was just one of many whose lives were ruined and some would say that I was lucky that I was alive, but some days I didn't feel lucky. That was what I was here to say, not to listen to them prattle on about the necessity and honor of it all. I was here to present the cost, my childhood, a doctor's sanity, a flyers dreams, a warriors life, an engineers sight, a child's mother, so many things that was why I was here on this flying monstrosity, listening to some flyer, who was too young to remember the galaxy war, babble on. 

I have this thing about my hair. I had to keep it short for my most of my life. Long hair got tangled when you tired to plug into the computer. Long hair itched and tangled and got in the way, it wasn't practical for an implant. Not for someone who scurried through tangled wreaks and ran through forests, who leaned over counsels and couldn't afford the second it took to brush the hair away. The longest I let it get was when I was on the floating piece of junk known as 40779 medical station or Hades, depending who was speaking, then I could let it go down to just below my jaw. At it's shortest I was practically bald. Mostly done by myself. I didn't mind, never really had the time or patience to be a girl and think about my hair, I was a child running through the motions of being a solider not really much for hair. 

The moment I was free however I tried hair grow products. I yelled when people even thought of cutting my hair. I didn't want to be that person, I wanted to be pretty. I wanted to be human again. Short hair was for running across a strange planet or sitting on a space station not for home, working on my farm and dancing with my wife. No I needed long hair; I needed to be a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter. Not a solider, not an implant, not a tech, not a medic, not a stranger. I grew it down to my waste and it tangled and it drags and I didn't know what to do with it but I needed it. Short hair was for boys, short hair made you stand out, short hair showed people where you had been, short hair showed the implant. Short hair wasn't practical for a wife and mother and daughter. 

The problem was that I stood out with long hair or short. Long hair, and makeup and dresses couldn't hide what had happened to me, what I was. Just because I looked the part didn't stop my nightmares. Didn't stop the agoraphobia, the hallucinations, the memories that no one understood. I didn't smile at the jokes that they said. I didn't want to go to dances anymore. I screamed every time something dropped and didn't like crowds. I had grown to be a different person while I was away and they had grown too. I wanted to be the person they wanted, who laughed and danced, and rode horses and played in fields and was everything for her child and family, but I couldn't. I wasn't a daughter, I wasn't a wife, I wasn't a mother; I was a stranger. Two days after my wife left me and took her son I chopped off all my hair. If long hair couldn't make me that person again then why should I try? 

My stomach lurched into my throat as the shuttle docked on the station and the young flyer apologized for the rough landing. I had to laugh compared to some of the aerodynamics redbird and starlight subjected me to over the years, that was a walk in the park, quite smooth but I say nothing. The two of us had developed a nice uncomfortable silence halfway through the ride and I had no desire to ruin it now. It wasn't that I hated or even disliked young people it's just that I didn't really understand them and they didn't understand me (especially my 'son' and daughter to them I was a blank wall that could never be understood and shouldn't even be tried) Besides it wasn't the ride that had disturbed my stomach it was the memories that insisted on invading my consciousness.

I had finally stopped seeing the war everywhere, the sight of red hair didn't make me think of a young woman with big dreams and big attitude stripped of everything she dreamed of just one of so many broken young people, the smell of rust and smoke didn't transport me to a death trap of a station and a situation born in Hades, I could hear the rumble of thunder without breaking into a cold sweat of terror and feel the rush of adrenaline surge through me, I no longer expected the floor under my feet to roll or the air to push in around me I don't flinch from the touch of metal I had finally left all that behind on a station that no longer existed and a world that we had no business pursing. I was free.

I wish that it had happened years ago before I was saddled with the mantle of crazy because I flinched at things that weren’t there and blinked and moaned in dim sunlight. Before my wife left me because she didn't recognize the woman she was with, because it was so much easier to pretend that everything was ok when a solar system and a video link stood between us. I wonder sometimes if she regretted marrying me because I know she didn't regret the divorce, she found someone better, someone who didn't still reside in space, who hadn't left her sanity on a planet so similar to ours yet so different. She found someone who could be there for her son, who didn't stare at him wondering why a little boy wasn't starring back, for the best I suppose. My second marriage lasted less time and my daughter loves me because she has to another thing that I regret. The second marriage confirmed something for me though, the reason that my first marriage had lasted so long was because we were able to turn off the video link. But I had sorted those issues now; I was ready to be a mother despite the fact that it was too late. Then this happened.

All that work to forget and all it took was one message to bring it all back, one message to remind me that it would never be over. They could demolish all of the medical and war stations, they can declare peace treaties and interspecies healing, they could remove all the implants that made my life hell, that stole my brother and twelve years of my life, they could do all these things and they did but they couldn't fix what had been done to me. They couldn't remove the memories of the horror, of the pain, of friends slowly losing their minds as they patched people and machines up as if they were interchangeable. They couldn't make it so one young flyer could stand up and walk, could recover her dreams of being the first flyer to search the shatner asteroid belt, to be the one to give humanity the resources it needed. It could never give a doctor back his sanity, his youth, his hope, his home or a mechanic her faith, her love, her determination. It could never return the lives lost, not simply the dead but the living, my brother would remain in a comma, I would remain alone and here they were offering their apologies and offer a celebration.

So my stomach clenched as the memories that I had fought so hard to suppress found their way through and I stepped onto the space station, I had never been here before but the moment my boots hit the ground with a tang it felt achingly familiar and I had to ignore the feelings coursing through me including the worst one of all, that I was coming home.


End file.
